EXCURUSION 1 – Lugano City “Passageways & Piazzas”

The itinerary leads from the new Cultural Centre LAC, down the long narrow of Via Nassa through to the center of Lugano, where visitors discover the traditional and cultural aspects of the city while viewing a fantastic array of premier works. The tour explores contrasting the architectural monuments of the past while showcasing virtual artwork of contemporary artists located in the Piazza della Riforma, Piazza Dante. Navigating upwards through narrow streets to the Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, visitors can write wishes and wants on the sky virtually. The route ends with an optional plunge into one of the city’s greenest areas, Parko Civico, which is the the largest city park and one of the most important in Switzerland. Here the flowers colours harmonise and blend with the shades of the lake and the surrounding landscape while virtuale butterflies flock and enhance it all.

L’Opere Virtuali «Vicoli e piazze»

Mood Modulators – The Curious Minded with Guests

Mood Modulators, The Curious Minded

Mood Modulators is a work that is rooted in the concept of art as a placebo, whose potency is capable of metamorphosing reality into a fiction of the imagination. There are capsules and pills to choose from, each with laden with an iconography which designates for the viewer the effect the pill or capsule will have on the imagination. Akin to their physical appearance, the pills when touched produce a mental effect of being emerged in a sunny blue skied day or a surrounded by rainbow filled heavens. The objects are administered not in order to induce stupor or insensibility, but to prodice a physiological effect of pure wonderment not only for the arts but also for oneself. Mood Modulators as a whole offers all the the ability to provide the senses with a a door to new perceptions.

Anamorph 3D – Alvaro Barata & Herve Graumann

Anamorph 3D bye Alvaro Barata & Herve Graumann

Anamorph is a virtual sculpture by Brazilian artist Alvaro Barata. Barata brings to us his hand-drawn form which has been virtually modeled, bringing the 2-D into the virtual 3-D world. Barata’s sculpture has been created using the features of “Anamorphosis.” In anamorphosis, a drawing viewed from a certain position reveals another image previously unseen, in this case a 3D form. The augmented reality sculptures has been placed at Lugano port and as it slowly rotates, the viewer begins to notices that the two sides of are very different but are the same model. The Textures of the objects modulate with the rotation of the work and reveal textures for the artists and his guests, the Swiss artist Herve Graumann.

Dose – Wil Pappenheimer and Virta-Flaneurazine

Dose by Pappenheimer and Virta-Flaneurazine

Consisting of multitude of cascading and rotating objects that seem fall from the internet right in front of you, the work “Dose” is an invisible hallucinatory experience perceived through the users mobile device. Developed as a variant of A new variant of Virta-Flaneurazine, the active element in Dose was successfully developed from the original, which was produced from the skin secretions of bio-engineered and programmed hybrid Bufo Toads. When areas of these toads are touched, the resulting reaction causes a wandering viewer to see things appearing from virtual worlds and other sources on the Internet. This is primarily a side effect of the intended wanderment properties of the Dose when understood and ingested mentally as a drug.

The Crystal Coffin – Lily & Honglei

Crystal Coffin by Lily & Honglei

The augmentation is inspired by the crystal coffin displayed in Mausoleum of Mao Zedong on Tiananmen Square since 1977, a year after Mao’s death. In the twenty first century, while China has been transforming itself into a modern society in many ways and gaining more influences economically and politically around the globe, Mao’s crystal coffin, the immortal-looking shell, remains exist as a symbol of authoritarian ruling system. During spring 2011, a crackdown on dissent – including detaining many intellectuals and members of religious group – followed by distinct signs of revival of Maoist policies, has left people baffled about the future direction of China. We therefore use Crystal Coffin of Mao as main body of the virtual China Pavilion topped with a tower and roof with ancient Chinese looking, as regulated by Ministry of Construction of China: architectural ‘designs must reflect traditional Chinese building styles’.

Dante’s Inferno – Mark Skwarek

Dante’s Inferno by Mark Skwarek

The people of Switzerland’s Lugano may now experience the descent to hell in Mark Skwarek’s augmented reality vision of Dante’s Inferno. They will see their soul’s journey as it descends, lower and lower, into the rings of hell. And it all happens at the Piazza Dante. Viewers who travel will descend into an AR abyss of the medieval vision of sin, punishment and the afterlife. These values will test the user. The augmented reality vision of Dante’s inferno will be a freely downloadable app for the public with wifi and a smartphone.

Halo AR – Will Pappenheimer and Zachary Brady

Halo Sky Writer by Will Pappenheimer

– Halo is a Skywrite AR project to be for DAW Virtuale Switzerland. The mobile App, Skywrite AR, creates sky written drawings and messages in virtual airplane trails for the visions, thoughts and concerns of citizens as creative artists and thinkers. Normally out of the financial reach for the general public, this grand scale image now becomes available for the casual artist, contemplative poet, the instant messenger or the protester addressing the need for political change. .Halo invites participants anywhere to trace a drawing into a canvas on their cell phone or mobile tablet. With the click of a button the work is transferred by virtual airplane to ephemeral vapor lines hundreds of feet above Lugano. Skywrite AR images are up to a kilometer wide and can be seen by others from up to 5 km away. The participant’s drawings hover above the city and mountains until the next person draws a new work, which then replaces the center image. The previous drawing is then moved to a giant outer ring composed of former participants’ works.

We AR Butteflies – The Curious Minded –

We AR Butteflies by The Curious Minded

Like children, butterflies are deep and powerful representations of life. Drawing a parallel in an artwork between butterflies and children comes naturally and by uniquely combining them in an artwork increases a feeling for life. Viewing the work brings the viewers into joyful and carefree mood and lets them reminisce with positive thoughts on life filled with hope and faith. The Augmented Reality project “We AR Butterflies” is not only an artwork for children, it is one that is made by children, because the artwork seen is the results of a hands on workshop for children of any ages, which teaches them how to transform themselves using a process of creative metamorphosis into colourful butterflies with using post-its, a mobile phone and some computer magic.